With the original Eye film, Danny and Oxide Pang created what is one of the most important horror films of recent memory, foreign or domestic. When significant horror films from overseas are mentioned The Eye stands among the likes of Hideo Nakata's Ringu and Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On. It managed to provide scares, without sacrificing story. In fact, the scares feature predominantly in the first half of the film, but take the back seat to the development of story during the last half of the film. Its sequel, The Eye 2, was less than stellar, featuring few scares, and a less than credible plot. The Eye 10 is perhaps an even stronger step in the wrong direction, as the plot is certainly no stronger than the previous film, and the scares are non-existent, instead being replaced with moderately successful doses of humor.

Where the original film was developed upon a simple premise - A woman receives a corneal transplant from a deceased woman, resulting in the ability to see ghosts. In the second film, the same result followed a pregnant woman's suicide attempt. The third accepts these reasons as a legitimate basis for developing a visual relationship with the dead, and suggest that there are ten more circumstances which can provoke the same effect. These ten ‘techniques' are all published in a book which a group of friends decide to read and have fun with one evening. Needless to say, things do not go well, and before long they find each other disappearing, and finding themselves in all manner of slightly creepy, slightly humorous situations.

The main problem with The Eye 10 is that it's not The Eye. It's a difficult film to follow, and ‘10' is no more successful at creating the atmosphere of the original film, than ‘2' was. The Pang's opted to take a different approach to the subject, obviously trying for laughs over scares, (where else can you see a man possessed by a ghost, in a dance off with a pair of street punks), and in that respect create a film that is generally more entertaining than the sequel that preceded it. One can not forget however, that this is a horror film, not to mention a sequel to one of the most pure horror films of the last decade, thus when the scares don't show up, a knowledgeable viewer will most definitely be disappointed. The closing scene is also distinctly American, which certainly doesn't help a film that fails to live up to the potential of its predecessor.

As anyone who has seen the original film can attest, the Pang Brothers have a definite skill when it comes to developing atmosphere. Yet, their efforts are less impressive as time passes, through the ‘Eye' sequels, and Abnormal Beauty, it seems as though they are content with developing their films with as little creativity as possible, borrowing strongly from their other films. I have high hopes that the Pang Brothers will produce another quality horror film. Perhaps that film is the upcoming Re-cycle… perhaps not. They are certainly a gifted duo, who have proven in the past that they are much more capable of creating genuinely frightening sequences, although their recent output would suggest otherwise. I certainly can't recommend The Eye 10 as an introduction to the directors, however, for those who have seen the previous films, The Eye 10 may entertain, albeit on a completely different level.